


the world (where you gonna run to?)

by MercutioLives



Category: High Noon Over Camelot - The Mechanisms (Album)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Blind Character, Canon Trans Character, Chance Meetings, Deaf Character, Exile, Gen, Nightmares, One-Sided Attraction, Past Character Death, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 12:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12432510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercutioLives/pseuds/MercutioLives
Summary: "You have until nightfall to get out of town. If you're still alive after three years, you can come back, but don't you dare show your face around these parts before then."Mordred comes to the end of his exile, and finds that familiar faces are not always friendly.





	the world (where you gonna run to?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fireinthedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireinthedark/gifts).



> Hoo boy, did I have a hard time with this one! I was excited to match on HNOC because it's my all-time favorite album, but who knew it could be so challenging to write for? Even so, I had a good time with it, and I hope it's as much fun for you to read as it was for me to write.
> 
> Some trivia: the fic title references the Tarot card "The World", which in its upright position can symbolize completion, such as reaching the end of a journey. Reversed, it signifies lack of closure or incompleteness. In some senses, both meanings can apply to this fic, at least to my mind.

_"Father, I'm sorry."_

_"You have until nightfall to get out of town. If you're still alive after three years, you can come back, but don't you dare show your face around these parts before then."_

Mordred's ears had never stopped ringing after the Battle of the Camlann Wastes. It was worst in silence, when there was nothing else for him to hear except the high-pitched whine of inner-ear damage. Sometimes it was quiet enough to hear the world around him, but more often these days it took over, stuffing his ears full like cotton. How long had it been since that hot, blood-soaked afternoon? How long since his father had banished him - and rightly so - for what he had done? He wasn't sure. He'd stopped marking the days long ago.

At first, he had tried to return to Annwn, hoping against all logic and sense that he still had a place among his adoptive people. That they let him run rather than killing him on sight for their supper was more gracious than he deserved: it was thanks to him that their numbers were so dangerously thin. From there, he simply wandered, killing when he had to, and giving a false name in order to beg a night's rest or a hot meal on the dime of a dead man. Some people recognized him, challenging him for justice or money he didn't possess: invariably, those men's names and belongings became his, too. He never stayed in one place for more than twenty-four hours, and never in small places where his face might be easily remembered. Safest to hide in a crowd, even though the noise mixed discordantly with the constant ringing in his ears.

His dreams were always full of gunfire and blood. Sometimes they mirrored true events, but mostly his guilt murdered everyone. Gawain was always first: his poison-green eyes dancing mad down the barrel of Mordred's pistol. He smiled cruelly, teeth stained pink with blood, and opened his mouth to swallow one last bullet. Arthur's men - his so-called knights - fell in scores, as did the Saxons, their peace found only in death. Guinevere was next, then Lancelot, each of them dropping in rapid succession. Finally, always last just as Gawain was always first, was Arthur. In the end, Mordred was always alone under the hot midday sun. He never woke before everyone was dead, as though his brain was incapable of moving on until this ritual had completed.

In reality, it had not happened like this. Somehow, in some way Mordred had yet to discover, he'd possessed the presence of mind not to deal any mortal blows to the Pendragons or to Gawain. He supposed that their survival was the only reason he wasn't hanged in the town square, though part of him - quite a sizable part, in fact - was certain that it would have been a kinder fate than exile. Wandering aimlessly through deserts and ghost towns, half-blind and half-deaf, he felt in his bones it was only a matter of time before he finally collapsed in exhaustion and decided not to get up again. It would have been an easy thing, to simply give in to the constant bone-weary drag of despair, but something pushed him onward. He didn't know if it was the promise that he might someday return to Camelot, or his own personal brand of stubbornness, but some force gave his feet the strength to take just one more step, and then another, and another. And so it went.

The fluorescent sun was waning when he came upon a dilapidated saloon. He couldn't read the sign that hung above the door - his vision was too far gone for reading much of anything anymore - but he could just hear the raucous clamor of drunken voice above the ringing in his ears. With one hand on his revolver, he stepped through the wide-open doors and into the crowded dimness. The change in lighting was almost literally like night and day, and his vision was immediately the better for it. Like most Saxons, his eyes saw better in the darkness. No one seemed to notice him, not even the man behind the bar, until he put down a stack of rusty coins where they could be seen. He ordered a whiskey he probably wouldn't drink, then tucked himself back into a corner to rest a while.

He didn't remember falling asleep, couldn't recall his head drooping down onto the table or his eyes slipping shut, but he must have done, for the next thing he knew, he was jerking upright into wakefulness after a dream he couldn't remember. The saloon was less crowded than it had been when he entered, but still full enough that no one had noticed him dozing in the corner. He learned from one of the barmaids - a young woman whose hair was going prematurely grey, and whose eyes didn't reflect the smile on her lips - that there were rooms on the second floor to let. He had just enough of the old tin coins in his pocket to pay for a night in a real bed, though it promised to be little better than an old cot. He couldn't even bring himself to mind that he would have to share the room with another patron. So long as his roommate wasn't hell-bent on causing trouble, he'd share with the Devil himself.

The room was empty when Mordred trudged up the rickety stairwell and matched by touch the number the bartender had given him. At least, there was no sign that either of the two low cots were currently occupied that he could tell. No shapes in the darkness, no movement, no sound. That suited him fine. After unwinding the strips of scavenged cloth that bound his chest, he all but collapsed onto the bed closer to the door. Only long habit lent him the presence of mind to slip his seax under his pillow. His mind wasted no time at all in dragging him down into the old, familiar nightmare, but this time it was only halfway done when he was wrenched up from its bloody grasp: he was being shaken awake, his name spoken directly into his ear in  a sharp voice that made his blood run cold.

Blazing in the darkness, only a few inches from his face, was a single green eye. He knew that eye, he saw it and its erstwhile mate every night in his sleep. Had seen it only moments ago, in fact. Mordred swallowed thickly, half-certain he had woken from one nightmare and vaulted directly into another; he couldn't speak or move. Gawain's laughter was harsh and mocking, though perhaps a little raspier than Mordred remembered. He ground his knuckles into his watery, grey eyes and blinked several times in Gawain's direction: he could just make out his tall, muscular form, and that eye. The other, the right one, was covered by a black patch. It must have happened sometime after Mordred had left, for he had had both eyes when last they saw each other.

"How did you find me?" It had been so long since he'd heard his own voice that he was startled by its timbre: higher than he remembered, but hoarse from dust and disuse. In the silence that came after, he noticed something strange. The ringing in his ears had quieted somewhat, not entirely but enough that he _could_ hear himself speak. Perhaps it was owing to sleeping on something other than the steel ground for more than an hour at a time, or perhaps it was mere coincidence. Who could say?

"Who said I was looking? You fell asleep in my bed. Wasn't even sure it _was_ you at first, but here you are. Lucky for you I'm out of bullets, else your brains would be painting the wall." Gawain's eye was alight, and though Mordred couldn't quite see it, his lips were twisted in a disdainful grimace. Once, long before all the violence and death, Mordred had wondered how it might be to kiss those lips. He had never brought such a thought to bear, and he knew now that it was for the best, but even after all that had come to pass there was something in him - pushed down deep - which wondered still.

"Lucky for me," he echoed, and finally dropped his gaze. He slowly slid his seax from beneath the pillow, sheathed it, and got to his feet. Swaying a moment, he made his bleary way across to the opposite bed. He felt Gawain watching his every move, but said nothing for a long time. With closed eyes, he listened to Gawain lie down on the cot he had abandoned. Sleep was nearly upon him when that razor-keen voice punctured the heavy silence once more.

"I told Arthur he should've hanged you, but he had this idea that you were his son." Mordred's throat tightened; his eyes sprang open in the dark. He couldn't tell by Gawain's tone whether or not he knew, but he listened all the same as he continued on. "He had a daughter once, did you know that? Saxons killed her back when we first took over from Sheriff Stone. I didn't know her myself, but Arthur told me about her. Morgause, her name was." The name caused him to flinch; no one had called him that in more than a decade, not since he had announced his new name to his Saxon family. He was certain now Gawain knew, there was no way that he didn't. Not his gender, which he'd long suspected Gawain had guessed (and for all his many faults, had never made sport of him for), but the truth that Mordred and Morgause were one and the same. Why else would he bring it up at all, if not to dangle that knowledge in front of him?

"They didn't kill her," Mordred said after too long, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "The Saxons, I mean. They saved her. The others… There was no saving them. Most of them were dead already, the rest barely alive and begging for death when the Saxons came. I was too young to know it then, but their knives were a mercy. Morgan said that I was young enough still to adapt to their ways, so there was no need to kill me. It's because of her that I didn't starve to death underneath my birth mother's corpse."

Silence again. It was tempting fate, he knew, to tell Gawain this. Of Arthur's people, none of them hated Saxons more than Gawain, and any suggestion of their innocence had always been the surest way to send him into a rage. He closed his hand around the hilt of his dagger and waited, but Gawain didn't stir save to turn around on his cot. Mordred didn't look over to see whether it was toward or away from him. The ringing had started up in his ears again, not unbearably loud, but enough that it caused his eyes to water a little. More time passed, more silence below the ringing, and he finally found the strength to ask the one question that battered against the walls of his skull.

"…How long has it been?" Mordred lay still, breath bated, listening as closely as he could for Gawain's voice. Even so, it surprised him a little when he heard it after several minutes.

"Five years. When you didn't come back, Arthur wanted to send a posse out to find you. No one would go." That answered Mordred's other question without his having to ask. His mind buzzed with ideas, plans; his heart leapt to life in his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but was preempted by words that killed the nascent eagerness in his belly: 

"He died still waiting for you."

Nothing more was said that night. Gawain eventually fell asleep (how Mordred could have forgotten his snoring, he couldn't say) but Mordred sat awake. His blurry vision grew blurrier still, tears he thought the heat had long since dried up soaking the scratchy pillowcase beneath his cheek. He pretended to be asleep when the artificial sun rose and he heard Gawain wake and leave the room, and waited at least an hour longer before getting up himself.

As it happened, he was only three days' walk from Camelot. Under the guise of a foreigner from a distant, dying town, he learned that Guinevere was now sheriff, and Lancelot had not been seen for nearly a year. Many whom Mordred had known and respected were dead or scattered to the winds. Camelot was still the only place for miles that had a steady source of fresh water, but even that seemed like it wasn't enough anymore, now that the man who had brought them all together was gone. He hadn't thought people capable of such sentimentality: surely, there were few alive who could afford it. Mordred took care not to cross paths with Gawain as he made his final trek of his long exile, for he believed what had been told him the night before. He had no doubt in his mind that should it come down to bullets, his own gun would not fire. It did so often enough in his dreams.


End file.
